George, Being George

by Nelson W. Aldrich

  CALVIN TRILLIN People who are rigidly prepared can’t do it very well. You have to feed off the last speaker or what’s happened, or something. I think in George’s case, he also had an enthusiasm that communicated itself so seductively that it wouldn’t have made much difference what he said. But, in fact, he did prepare. I mean, I was always amazed that he really sort of worked on it. I suspect George didn’t say no as often as he should have. Sarah would say, “You don’t really have to do it, just ’cause that guy knew your cousin at Wimpole Academy doesn’t mean that you have to do his benefit, especially when it’s not even a cause you particularly care about. . . .” But you know George.

  HUSBAND AND FATHER

  SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON Accommodating me pretty soon became a huge source of resentment for him, which is interesting because he accommodated everyone else all too easily, but he couldn’t do it at home. For instance, I thought it would be a good idea to find a new home when we got married, so that it would be ours together. What was I thinking? The apartment was just chock-ablock full of reminders of his life. In the office was the collection of African masks; the basket full of little totems, little birds, little medals, trophies, and other things he couldn’t bear to throw away; all his plaques, his book covers, his framed reviews, the Paris Review posters he especially liked. In the bathroom were his photos: George in the ring with Archie Moore, blood streaming out of his nose, George pitching in the All-Star game, George at St. Bernard’s, George as the “flying telephone pole” on the trapeze, George with his fireworks, George with Ali, George in the bullring with Hemingway. There were always people coming by, wanting a tour of the apartment, and when we passed that bathroom, I would say, “This is the room that George goes into whenever he feels a lapse of self-esteem.” When I finally persuaded George to renovate the apartment so we could both live in it, he fought me every step of the way—even though it was a huge improvement. He would admit that to friends, but he never said a word to me.

  George and Sarah with Olivia (left) and Laura (right).

  Photograph © Jonathan Becker, all rights reserved.

  FIONA MAAZEL They fought. They fought a lot. There was a lot of screaming, and he would come downstairs furious and then instantly forget it and be hilarious George. You just didn’t see them interact all that much. None of us knew why he married her, or she him. None of us knew why he had ever married at all. None of us understood it. But none of us cared about it, either. We had to deal with Sarah only when we were having another party upstairs. She hated it, hated it, hated it—then would show up, have a great time, and then be difficult about it. I heard that Freddy did the same.

  SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON Upstairs was separate from down-stairs. He was very clear about not wanting me involved with the magazine. It helped him stay in control of the staff. He took great offense whenever I offered my opinion about magazine affairs. It was his private domain and I was not to intrude. Of course, that’s an impossible arrangement because he put no limits on the staff being part of his household. For example, when we were first married, The New York Observer had a column called the “Eight-Day Week,” where they highlighted interesting parties and events in the coming week. Every party we ever gave somehow made it into that column. We might as well have had an open house, because as far as George was concerned, the more the merrier. If he sent out seventy-five invitations, a hundred fifty people would show up, most of them complete strangers. One day, we had so many people that the floor in our apartment cracked and sent the ceiling crashing down on Walter Sohier’s living room just below us. I called the paper and complained. But when George got wind of my call, he was livid. He said, “How dare you ever speak to the press! How dare you tell them what to do!” Part of it was that he was worried what they’d make of it, but mostly he was outraged that I would tamper with the magic of his parties.

  DANIEL KUNITZ Everything changed after Sarah moved in. First of all, she renovated the Review office, then the apartment, except for his office, of course, and the famous bathroom with all his photos. George was still pretty much the same guy, but the whole atmosphere changed. We used to work up in his apartment, or at least as much as we did in the office. And then, obviously, we didn’t work up there. Sarah was very gracious; I never felt unwelcome up there. It was just a different situation. It was their home. Didn’t George change at all? Yeah. He didn’t party every night after Sarah moved in with him.

  ELIZA GRISWOLD When I met Sarah, she was pretty much already at her wits’ end, because I think she had—as she would say herself—assumed that things would change once they got married. And things hadn’t changed. And then she assumed things would change when she had the twins [in 1994]. And they didn’t change then, either. I spent a lot of time with Laura and Olivia when they were tiny little girls, which was really fun for me. That was probably one reason why, when some people had problems with Sarah, I had none, because I saw the family as coming first, and that helped relieve a lot of tension. I think I was helpful in setting some boundaries around the use of their house and the use of George’s time. She liked to know before things happened, and I was comfortable with that. The people who don’t like Sarah—sure, Sarah would freak out and get angry and that kind of thing—but I don’t know why they cared. I think she had George’s best interests at heart. In terms of George’s social life, and his social schedule, he needed to rest, and he needed some time with his family, and people who opposed that—well, it always struck me as a little bit suspicious that they wanted so much from George.

  REMAR SUTTON Very few people understood how close George and I were. Medora and Taylor did, and Freddy did, and some other people did. I never cared. That’s why I haven’t been sure if I wanted to be in the book, because my relationship with George was what we all want in life: It was a truly private relationship.

  DANIEL KUNITZ Remar’s a social climber, and he’s somebody who wants to be friends with the rich and powerful, but I do think he gives back, and that’s how he makes it happen. The way he gives back is he’s a fantastic entertainer; he’s willing to call in favors; he’ll cobble together things to make it really great with everybody. I don’t think Remar is a bad guy. I remember when he was living in that house in the country with Freddy and the children; I think he raised those children.

  REMAR SUTTON I remember when I met Sarah. At that time I was up in New York probably every two weeks. And George and I had, actually, a fabulous bachelor time because Freddy was never there. And then one day Sarah was sitting in the living room with him, in the pool room. He introduced her, and for a while there, Sarah and George and I had a lot of fun together. But then Sarah became aware that I was detracting from her chance to have a relationship with George, and she was right. She realized, rightfully, that if I was going to suck up all that air, there wasn’t going to be much left for her. That was when Sarah tried to distance me from George. Of course, she had to do that.

  ROWAN GAITHER Remar Sutton was a real character, and he was always getting George into some sort of trouble. Remar was a wonderful guy, but he was always working an angle. After George married, it was clear to me that Remar no longer had the run of the house the way that he did. Remar had at one point left the leavings of one of his romantic evenings [a condom] around the apartment. And that pretty much sent Sarah over the moon. Another time, Remar called me because he was trying to get me to get George to do something that Sarah didn’t want George to do, and he was hectoring me to make George available to do it. I said, “Remar, I can’t do that. Sarah is now George’s wife. Sarah is now my boss’s wife, and that’s the way it is.” He basically didn’t ask me to do anything else after that.

  SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON George made you feel terribly special; it’s no wonder so many people fell in love with him. But some people exploited his generosity shamelessly. When Remar came to stay, the apartment became party central every night. That’s fine if you’re the guest, but it’s insanity when it’s your home. Besides, the constant partying made it
hard to get any work done. George just couldn’t say no to him, or anyone else for that matter. I hated always having to be the bad cop, but someone had to draw the line, and it wasn’t going to be George.

  BUZZ MERRITT The Dudleys, Sarah’s parents, moved to Redding not long ago and built a beautiful big place and gave George and Sarah the old groundskeeper’s house, very near their place, which the parents thought was going to be great. But Sarah said, “Well, you know the trouble out here is that nobody seems to recognize George, and that’s bothersome.” So I went up to our little local post office, and because the postmaster is a big baseball fan, I said, “You know, we’ve got a guy now coming here, George Plimpton.” “Oh, Mr. Plimpton, gosh, I’ve seen him a lot.” And I said, “Well, say hello to him.” “Oh, I—I—I wouldn’t want to do that.” So I said, “Well, the next time he comes in, you tell him blah blah blah.” So finally my postmaster did say hello, and he said, “Oh, Mr. Plimpton, he was very interesting, we talked for a long time.” Then I said, “Sarah, we’re making inroads here. The postmaster’s recognized George.” “Yeah,” she said, “but after the postmaster, he went over to buy a paper and get some stuff at the market, and they didn’t recognize him, so he was very upset.”

  JAY MCINERNEY It was tough for Sarah. She wanted custody of a public figure. George was a public figure, and you can’t have somebody like George all to yourself. Nobody could. She probably expected more. She and I had our ups and downs, because she considered me part of that world that was always calling George out the door, always beckoning him out into the night. I’m sure she thought that that would change more than it did.

  George with his son, Taylor, at the Indy 500, 1982.

  From the collection of George Plimpton.

  FAYETTE HICKOX Gene Scott, the publisher of Tennis Week and another late breeder, told me that he asked George how he liked being an “older dad.” George said, “Well, I didn’t change diapers before, and I’m not going to change diapers now.” Gene was more the kind of modern dad who thought there was nothing finer in life than changing his child’s diapers. I know people say that George became more fatherlike with the twins he had with Sarah than he had been with the two kids he had with Freddy. But I don’t know why people say that. When he was around, he was a very fond father with both sets of children, better and better as they grew older, learned tennis, told him about their lives and friends. But he just wasn’t around very much, certainly in comparison to the amount of time I spend with my son.

  BILL CURRY I’d call him on the spur of the moment and say, “How you feelin’, George?” and he’d say, “Well, I must say, the twin thing is rather exhausting.” That’s when the girls were really small. Caroline and I went up and participated in the twin thing. We held the girls in their diapers and all. Sarah started getting on George, saying, “Look at Bill! He’s held the girls in the last two hours more than you have in the last month!” So I went and put them down. I had practice with babies—he, on the other hand, was a little rusty.

  CHRIS CERF Whether fatherhood was the center of his life—I’m sure it wasn’t; but I’m sure he was great when he got around to it. He always took delight in the kids. I remember his total delight in Medora playing tennis when she was little. He would always talk about her “brown legs flashing.” It always struck me: What other dad would take that away from what he noticed about his daughter, a Lolita reference?

  JONATHAN DEE One of the things I remember most vividly made me sad at the time: Taylor and Medora were still pretty young. Taylor wasn’t ten yet. His school called the Review because Taylor was in the nurse’s office—he had gotten sick and he needed to come home; but there was nobody upstairs, so I went to get him. I hadn’t been working there that long. Taylor would have recognized me, but he didn’t really know me at all. He was just a little kid, and he was sick. I felt so bad for him. I went to the nurse’s office and said, “Taylor, I’m sorry, your mom and dad aren’t around, but I can take you home.” He just shrugged and went along with it, and we rode home without a word. We went upstairs, and I asked him if he needed anything, and he said no, he would be fine. He went to his room and shut the door, and I went back downstairs to the office.

  DRUE HEINZ George was wonderful when he came to Florida with his son, Taylor. He’d come in the middle of a week when Taylor, who was about six (I think), had been lying around all day, swimming, doing whatever. George arrived straight off the plane and looked at the boy and said, “Where are your whites?” Taylor said, “I brought them, Daddy,” and went and got his tennis whites. The little boy came out looking like a replica of George. George took him straight out to the tennis courts. The boy’s a crack tennis player today. George was extraordinary with children. He was always a personal friend to them.

  MEDORA PLIMPTON I think I was the first Plimpton not to go to an Ivy League school or to Exeter; I went to Tabor Academy and to Hampshire, this sort of hippie-liberal, great college. Taylor went to St. Paul’s, which is pretty much like Exeter, but then he went to Reed, which is about as far away from Harvard, geographically, as you can get. And Dad was always supportive of that. He wanted us to follow our dreams and what we wanted to do. It was nice not to feel that pressure that I know a lot of my other friends felt. I had friends whose parents were disappointed that they hadn’t gotten into more prestigious schools. He was always very low-key about it. You wouldn’t think he would be, looking at him and hearing his voice and knowing where he’d grown up. You’d think he’d want to push his kids, but he really didn’t do that.

  George and Medora at her wedding in August 2000.

  Photograph © David Garten.

  TAYLOR PLIMPTON I would see the other Plimptons at Thanks-giving or Christmas, and every now and then at a party at the house, but I always felt awkward at family gatherings. And I felt I had to be very proper. I felt that way with Dad sometimes, too. It wasn’t easy for me to be myself, whatever that means. I think I was always a little more formal around my dad and a little more careful about what I said, but that got better as time went on. The last couple years before he died, I felt much more comfortable hanging out with him and just chatting and chilling. But he was the father figure, the parent; it wasn’t a punch-your-dad-in-the-arm kind of relationship.

  SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON You’d think he would be marvelous company for a child. And he was, up to a point. When we were first married and Taylor lived with us, his friends would come over before they went out in the evening, and George would try to reach out to them. But the only way he knew how to connect was by telling stories, and you could see Taylor shrug his shoulders and pretend to be interested. The sense of frustration was palpable. He was proud of his father, but you sensed that he needed a deeper connection with him. His friends all thought George was cool and amazing, so Taylor adopted that same worshipful stance toward his father. But I imagine there would also be great frustration at wanting his father to put down the facade and be real with him. But his adoration made it impossible for George to appear real to him, even if George had wanted to.

  MEDORA PLIMPTON I think most kids would be sort of worried about their parent getting up and speaking at their graduation. There is a time in life when you’re sort of embarrassed by your parents no matter what they do. But I was so thrilled and proud to have him up there at my graduation from Tabor, and then his speech actually blew them away. Blew his speech away, too. It was a windy day, a beautiful day in Marion, Mass., and he was standing up there, and all of a sudden a couple pages of his speech just blew away in the wind. He had to wing it, and he did a fantastic job. I was so proud, I was just beaming, and everybody came up after-wards and said, “Wow, it must have been incredible growing up with him!”

  JOEL CONARROE I loved meeting his charming wife and the twins and so on, but again, I wondered if this wasn’t another one of his Walter Mitty fantasies: The man at sixty-seven years old fathers two adorable children and has a beautiful wife. Why not? There’s just no end to this guy and his self-inventions. />
  SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON At parties people would often come upstairs, invited or not, to view the girls. I hated that. It was as if they were some kind of curiosity to be inspected—George Plimpton’s twins—but it terrified the girls. Once someone barged in while Laura was in the bath. Can you imagine? After a lot of that sort of thing, the girls preferred to take in the parties from the top of the spiral staircase—at a safe distance. I became very protective of them and tied a piece of ribbon across the stairs to discourage intrusions. They barged up anyway.